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Can a bad dealer survey make future service a problem?
whatfuture
Member Posts: 46
I posted a low rating on a forum. The dealer contacted me. I went in for him not me. Most of his answers were baloney. He asked me to raise my rating - his answers were worthless to me (most of them). I said I'd just not have it posted. That remained true but I never said I wouldn't post a review elsewhere.
I just took the survey from corporate (Hyundai) and rated them low. They know who took it. Have any of you had repercussions from giving a dealership a low rating? If the manager had not asked me to increase my ratings, I wouldn't be concerned. And, I appear to have one issue after another with them.
Thanks.
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Well... you found out the hard way... Those surveys aren't anonymous. I throw mine in the garbage. No matter how much I feel the need to vent, it's not worth it in the long run.
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My former Chevy Service Manager used to tell me he knew I gave them good ratings. I got a fair amount of stuff for free or reduced rates after warranty--such as rotors. But then, I never felt cheated or angry at them, even previously.
Thanks kyfdx. Yes, they aren't anonymous. Ironically, the dealership is bad and the service department doesn't know what they're doing. It may be a case of venting and nothing much lost. This is really crazy. I read one review where someone said the dealership was blackmailing them. I can only wonder if this is why. The problem with giving the dealership a good rating is they're not good. I just got back from talking with a guy at the service department and he had no clue what he was talking about.
Ooops, let me add one more piece of information. I called Hyundai. They parse out the surveys to a third party company and the rep said no one knows who it is. He doesn't know if my name remains attached to the review or how it's dealt with. I understand the need to be independent and it may get me nailed. The rep has had other people call in to try to recall the survey. In this day and age, it makes sense and it's bad sense ... Recall my honest survey because I'm afraid of repercussions.
That sounds like you're being intimidated or blackmailed: improve the poor evaluation of the store or else you'll get poorer service. Myself, I'd find a different dealer. I didn't like my local area chain tire store so I drive past 2 stores (really 4 are closer) to get to a good one.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
I do the same thing with restaurants.... ;-)
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imidazoI97: I'm not being blackmailed or blackballed yet but the guys at the dealer are clueless and the fact that a manager asked me to re-rate (give them a higher score) despite his dopey responses says a lot about their desperation. The service manager lied (the manager said he was trying to bring in business ...). His assistant continued the lying today. I wasn't born yesterday and know computers.
In the meantime, I'm looking for another car and not holding my breath that I'll take the monetary loss. I have a dealership looking. This is worse than buying a used car (my car was totaled) and told it was an AWD - it was on the invoice. But it was a FWD Subaru Legacy. No one could do anything about it BBB+++. The Hyundai experience is worse. The Legacy lasted to 150k miles then, I traded it in for another Subaru.
I'm surrounded by lovely mountains and it's great where we live EXCEPT there's one Hyundai dealer about 15 minutes away. I called a dealership in SC and asked if they take in cars that have problems under warranty. We're talkin' dealerships not tire stores (have one that's funky but I like them), or mechanics (ditched two auto mechanics) and ended up at a place that does oil changes but they know what they're doing with more difficult things. So, with the dealership, I'm probably screwed.
I don't and never have cared how close a good place was and I'd go but an hour takes two people two vehicles and eight hours RT (2 cars 2 hours down same back) then back again. It's nutty. There's nothing closer. We used to drive far to go to a good restaurant. Now, unless we want Chinese, we're fine. Chinese would take a 12 hour drive to NY or NJ and we're not that crazy
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My view on this is basically the same, many if not all dealers (salesmen) have one thing in common.. to sell you a car at any price just so they can make their commission. Thou I've written many reviews about products and have yet to have any manufacture confront me about said product.. One site like Yelp allows you you create reviews about local business etc. I wrote about one restaurant that wasn't on the up and up.. Long story short.. Yelp and the restaurant had my account ban.. Mind you yelp is a review site and apparently no one is interested in hearing the bad stuff people say about their services or restaurant conditions. The same holds true for dealerships.. bad servers etc deserves a bad review?.. not the case with most of the sites today. I recall once while in "Carmax" I was in the restroom (stall) and overheard 2 carmax techs talking about one women that brought her car in for service.. lets just say.. what the techs said wasn't befitting to the carmax or any other dealerships standards. Lastly.. 1 dealership can ruin it's own reputations as well as other dealerships or the "One bad apple syndrome"
I've reached a point in my life that while I care about the lack of service I may get at the dealership, I made some effort to discuss my issues with a manager. I continue to knock with the facts and only the facts how the dealership lied to me and how the company does nothing to help people. They just want to sell cars. I just received an email from Hyundai (they know who I am) about the bogus miles on the Monroney sticker (the MSRP, I guess) and said it was supposed to have been corrected and blamed it on the EPA. I wrote back and said factually some things in addition to, "... I'm not stupid and there are a lot of us out here who feel the same way." So, we'll see how badly I get nailed
. In the meantime, I'll wait it out and not go into the dealer for hopefully anything. I'm attempting to hold out long enough to trade in my Elantra for a car with a better reputation.
I don't know if it's one rotten or bad apple. It's the company pushing the salesmen to sell cars at the cost of the consumer. I know it's this dealership. I also avoid them and with shorter warranties never had to be concerned about any dealership.
If we don't do this - let people know about dealerships, in addition to word of mouth, people will continue to go to the dealership and be zinged.
Your comment about Yelp surprises the heck out of me. I will use Yelp to repost what happened to us at Carmax (it prompted both of us to sell the car purchased there last June). I nailed them to a cross. If they had not sold a car with issues, I wouldn't have done it. I'm not surprised about what I would call data scrubbing. I've seen it on other sites and I stopped using them when I was dinged.
I had written a lot of reviews on Yelp. They were specific and ran the gamut from restaurants - good to the worst I've ever had - to a cleaning service.
Folks: It's now the end of July. I ended reviews on Yelp after dinging the dealership and wondered if what I read about Yelp was true. A manager said, "We've made numerous attempts to contact xxxx (moi)." Nope, they didn't unless they wanted me for something. Y'all pretty much agreed that I was being blackmailed.and to ignore surveys or writing bad reviews. I suppose it's blackmail to the extent that they're nailing me but it's not blackmail by the actual definition. It's more of a a loss of morals (and I don't mean biblical morals
). My reviews were honest. When you have a service manager telling you you must go to the dealership for work (including oil changes) and I told him (reminded is a better word) about the government regulation that says we can go anywhere, I was concerned. I can say at my age that I'm not going to them to have any work done. If I need to drive an hour (or five ... but I stumbled on them when I got off my exit to go to the hotel) I will. I also got permission from the dealer an hour away to have them work on issues with my car.
If we all give good reviews and not tell the truth, we're as good as the dealership. I can't do that. So, I have what I consider to be a crap car and to get it fixed by someone I trust, I'll do it on my next trip to the hospital in November where I found a knowledgeable technician near my hotel. He went out of his way to get the issue (it was a bad one for me) fixed.
Fortunately, after he worked on it for an hour, he asked when I'd be back - three weeks. He fixed it at that time. But man, to get that far I got so many lies from managers elsewhere. It was unbelievable. One guy said it would cost $4k to replace the unit they charged $2k for (honest). He wasn't at the shop where it was replaced.
We have choices in life. This is my last car at my age and was planned that way (I thought I'd get ten years out of it but it's got computer issues, so I'll give it five). I have a motorcycle and try putting the mileage on it rather than the car. Soon, we'll be down to one (not mine, obviously). My choice is to not care about freebees but ethical dealerships. But if I was younger, I can't say what I'd have done and this garbage has never happened before. I'm glad you're getting good stuff from the dealership. Even if I gave good reviews about them, when I'm lied to several times (or they guys there just don't know what they're doing), I would not go there.
One last thing. It is illegal to find out who writes reviews (you need a court order to track an IP address to a specific location). I realized Hyundai would likely tell the dealership about my review. Enough had happened and it was time to face the out of tune music. I wasn't using service locally. I didn't care. I may in the future but then it's probably time to ditch the car. At least it will have low mileage. We kept AAA so if something happens, we can have the car towed to a dealership @75 miles from here.
Good luck, folks, and thanks for being out here.
I think it's more of an issue between you and the website owner. You have to read the terms of use or privacy statements to see if a site discloses any personal info about you and under what circumstances.
I tell it like it is. Usually it seems to go in one ear and out the other. However, the last time I filed a poor report I got a response. Was asked what it would take to edit and up my review. I told them what ticked me off and they fixed it. To be frank i was surprised.
Survey results are of huge importance to car dealerships.
I had among the highest scores in the store where I worked but once in awhile someone would ding me. Once that happened, I had no use for that customer.
I loved the people who would grind me on price for two hours and then complain that the process took too long. THEY were the reason it took so long!
As cars became more complicated, the delivery process could take a long time. Honda wanted us
to go over EVERYTHING in great detail. On a car with NAVI etc this could take an hour or more. Programming Bluetooth, showing the XM radio etc. On a busy Saturday, we simply did not have the time.
Then I had the people who, after spending four hours driving cars, working out a tough deal etc, going through finance etc just wanted to go home! They were tired hungry etc and just wanted to go. I would show them the basics, hand them the inch thick Owner's Manual and suggest they read through it and to call me with any questions. They would seem grateful at the time.
Some would then respond on the survey that I didn't go over everything with them.
I've heard that it's even worse now as the pressure for great survey scores has increased since I retired.